Suzanne Kimberlin is a therapist based in Wiltshire, and late last year she called me up because her web designer had recommended me to shoot her portrait for her new website.

Our first conversation didn’t prove too promising as Suzanne was clearly nervous about having her photo taken and not convinced anyone could take a photo she would like. Despite this we set a date in the first week of 2012 and I turned up on the day, determined to do her justice.

I approached the task in the same way I approach any photo session, which is with an eye for what the design requires, balanced with what’s going to make the subject look their best.

Having no wish to bang on about how great I am (I’m not great, just passionate about doing my best), I’ll leave you with an example of one of the photos I shot and the email Suzanne sent me after I’d sent her the results.

We had a laugh or two. The idea was to show Suzanne in the context of her treatment room

Suzanne's email brightened my day

This might be as simple as updating a portrait of the CEO, and you’re not normally looking to reinvent the wheel in that scenario unless the company imagery needs a change of style. On other occasions it’s about finding a fresh way to re-photograph an older idea.

Such it was last November when Wickes asked me to repeat what I’d done for them in a previous year. That is say, a press shot to illustrate the story that their call-centre colleagues would be operating the switchboard into the night in order to take pledges for Children in Need.

Hardly an original idea, but the wig, expression and phone receivers make it eye-catching

The lady in the red wig was the shot which went out previously, and it was very well received, but of course I didn’t simply want to repeat that. I had to come up with something similar, but not the same.

Luckily this time around the props were different, but the setting was the same – a dark, messy open-plan office space with light which wasn’t going to work for pictures. I decided to use the Pudsey Bear bunting and a different floor of the office which was closed for the night, therefore I could set up lighting and spend some time with the model photographing her away from all her colleagues to reduce the embarrassment factor.

This time the bunting added colour and gave more clues to the story

The results convey a similar energy and use much the same “tight” newspaper style, but the content of the picture is subtly updated and more of the Children in Need branding is included, which I think helps to tell the story even more fully.

You might think it would be boring to have to repeat something previously photographed, but for me it was more of a challenge to come up with something new, and I enjoyed the challenge enormously. The thing about photography is you can always update and improve a good idea.

One vision of DCE was described by Hooper during an interview on Radio 4s Today programme as an Amazon-style market place where creators could set prices for their work and buyers could browse, buy and take possession of licenses of high-resolution versions of digital works in a very streamlined process.

It’s not clear to me how this would work. How would the DCE be populated with works? Who would be adding them? Would it become a facility that can bypass the Getty-like stranglehold on licensing? Perhaps photographers would be able to upload images and sell direct, negotiating their own fees and keeping a much higher percentage of the revenue from sales. Clearly this would benefit photographers and end-users as there would be a renewed incentive for quality images to be made available.

I do fear however that fees will be set independently as it’s envisioned that the process should be as much like online retail as possible, but that this will ignore all the factors that a photographer would need to take into account such as end use or commercial/non-commercial requirements of an image.

Meanwhile, would Getty stand for this? They might find their traditional suppliers drifting away if the scheme offered better returns on their images. Alternatively, an organisation like Getty or Corbis (owned by Bill Gates) might offer to host and administer such a scheme, but that risks bringing us straight back to where we are now.

Is there not a risk that a DCE would create a two-tier copyright protection where your images are better protected if they’re in the scheme? And how is use of the scheme and images sold through it to be policed? This isn’t going to be an easy thing to set up and administer, and the internet has a habit of suddenly shifting and going off in its own direction once you try to coral the content.

Stop 43 is campaigning for better protection of photographers' copyright.

I don’t feel I’m best placed to investigate all the issues as I’ve not had the time to fully absorb the conclusions of the Hargreaves review, but take a look at the Stop 43 site which has some really useful info and ideas, and visit the Intellectual Property Office website where you can submit your views on the Digital Copyright Exchange. I urge both professional and amateur photographers to do so as this affects our ability to say where and how our own images are used. You may not like what’s coming, but this might be your only chance to shape it.

Christine uses photos for her crafty articles

What camera kit are you currently using? Nikon D40x and my iphone.

What pictures do you most like to take? Candid shots of people, I’m taking a lot of photos of trees and also a lot of food for my new food blog. Buildings from odd angles. Reflections in water…Pictures of water, especially ripples…anything which catches my eye basically!

What was your most recent picture? Narcissus Grandiflora Paperwhite.

What picture are you most proud of taking? The one of Dulsa in Mozambique is hard to beat. I followed a vaccine from the UK to her leg as part of my trip with Save the Children.

Christine followed a vaccine to Mozambique to see it delivered to villagers in Guija

Do you have a website/flickr feed etc we can see? My blog is Thinly Spread. My new food blog (work in progress) is Fab Food. I have a neglected Posterous account here and I am on instagram as chrismosler

Christine Mosler is rapidly building a reputation as a freelance writer and blogger.

If you could improve one area of your photography, what would it be? I would like to resist the automatic setting more than I do!

Would you like to become a pro one day, or is this always going to be a hobby? I think it’s going to be a hobby with occasional flings into pro. My writing work calls for photos and more and more often I am being asked to provide them.

If you could like to go pro, what kind of work would you shoot? I’d love to do more work with charities in the field. I have so enjoyed taking photographs which have had a massive impact on others who have no obligation to say…’ooh nice shot’!

If you could have taken one great photo, what would it be? (this can be a photo which already exists or an event of which no photo was taken). I would love to have been there when Nelson Mandela took his long walk to freedom. I’d also like to have taken a good picture of my Gran before she died because I was a bit rubbish back then!

Thank you for your time Christine.

This was the combined 1st anniversary of the new landlord, Mark Birchall, at The Inn at Freshford, as well as a good opportunity for a bit of an early Christmas knees-up for the Freshford villagers and friends of Mark.

Landlord Mark Birchall meets Sgt Pepper's Only Dartboard Band

To make it extra special Mark asked Sgt Pepper’s Only Dartboard Band to come along as the live entertainment. Just a three-piece (I think Ringo was having a break; that or there wasn’t room for a drum kit), but they still rocked. I’d seen Sgt Pepper at The Cheese and Grain one New Year’s Eve, and I can testify that they’re great fun and very true to the sound of The Beatles, right down to the sarky remarks from ‘John’ and ‘Paul’.

Sgt Pepper's Only Dartboard Band in full swing

Not only was it a pleasure to work for Mark that evening, who has to be the most gregarious pub landlord I’ve ever met, but the music was FAB too. I hope the pictures captured something of the atmosphere which, Sgt Pepper outfits aside, was redolent of an early Cavern gig… not that I ever went to one. I was born in 1966.

The audience soon got in the spirit of the event

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all my readers. Only my readers though

When it comes to conferences, it’s easy for an organisation to talk itself out of hiring a professional photographer to cover the event (that’s assuming they’ve given photography any thought at all).

If you’re considering a conference you might dismiss the need for professional coverage for two main reasons:

1. To hire a photographer for the duration of a conference is a relatively large up-front cost
2. It’s easy to snap some pics of people talking and delegates listening, isn’t it? So collar the keen camera owner from within your own ranks and set them the task because it’s cost-free. Supposedly.

The answer to the first question is that while it is an up-front cost, that cost is often out-weighed by the value of the images delivered because you’ll have pictures to use for all kinds of post-event PR, and the eventual cost of individual images will be very low. I’m talking a few £s each, if covered properly. With quality coverage you’ll have a good selection of shots you can use repeatedly.

Conferences are also often the only time key individuals of an organisation are together, so it’s worth seeing what headshots and other useful non-conference images can be garnered to get even greater value from the photographer’s fee. Don’t go mad of course, the photographer has to spend time dealing with all the images afterwards, but properly built into the brief in advance you should be able to get more than just conference photos from the conference.

The answer to the second question is that it’s harder than you might think. You’ll see some people (professionals and amateurs alike) attempting to use whatever lighting is available, which will be whatever crazy-coloured lights the AV guys fancy throwing onto the stage. It might (might!) look OK on video, but generally looks pants in stills.

To avoid the ‘purple gargoyle’ look, and to avoid trying to shoot at 3,200 asa for bullet-like grain and still getting camera-shake, some photographers then resort to sticking a flash on top of their camera. Oh dear. Now we have white-out faces and shocking outline shadows around the speakers.

I work differently. Using my own portable flash system I ensure speakers are properly lit. Very often I can set it so that not only the speaker is lit nicely, but also their slide presentation is still visible too. It’s not always possible to do that as it depends on the venue and staging arrangements, but the focus is always on generating high quality images for the client.

If a staff member has shot the pictures, that’s someone taken away from their useful duties to perform a task they’re not up to doing competently and you’re left with unusable images, with no PR value at all.

This is why, when planning a conference and its coverage, you need to pick a professional photographer and one that knows what they’re doing.

In the past couple of months I’ve been busy with conferences for the likes of Regen South West and the Digital Curation Centre’s international conference. I’m posting some key images here so you can see how while a conference image may not make it to the walls of a gallery, neither does it have to be a comedy of photographic errors…

The speaker is lit by flash, but the slide hasn't been obliterated by the light.

Using flash on the speaker and framing him with audience silhouettes adds atmosphere.

Some conference attendees have different ways of absorbing information...

Used well, flash is more flattering than coloured spotlights favoured by AV crews.

Finding interesting views of speakers helps add variety to the picture set.

You can now see a fuller set of images from the Digital Curation Centre conference in Bristol here.

With Christmas looming fast, it may be New Year before things get back to normal, but do keep your eyes peeled as I have a few subjects I’d like to address in the coming weeks.

Thanks to all my loyal readers for your patience. I hope you’re all well and not missing me too much

Tim

Typical of a press job it happened in terrible conditions; cold, dark, and the rain was coming down sideways. The girls train at the Frome Leisure Centre all-weather pitches, which are floodlit and I have to say that although the lighting isn’t perfect, it was better than some I’ve experienced.

In addition to the adverse weather, I feared my Canon 5D MKII wouldn’t be up to the task of sport action, and it’s true to say that since I no longer own a 1D-series body it’s not so easy to catch action with the 5D’s 3.5 frames per second, but that’s where timing and a bit of extra thought comes in.

Under the conditions, I couldn’t just “spray and pray”. I had to find the angle, see where the pools of uneven light were at their brightest, and work hard to keep focus and capture the peak of the action.

In addition, I don’t think I’ve shot football of any description in over a decade, which added an extra little frisson to the evening’s assignment. That and the fact this was for The Sun, not a local paper that would be grateful for anything recognisable as football.

I shot the standard team shots and portraits of Julie Peet, the poor, suffering coach who had to put up with the rain, the cold and the fact that these girls are… let’s just say full of spirit. It was like watching a cat-herd at work.

I’ve posted some of the results here, including the “alternative” team shot which I couldn’t resist as a more fun alternative to the standard team photo.

In the end, the job was a pleasure. These girls have incredible spirit and humour to do what they do in a sport dominated by boys. They deserve to do well, and who knows? Maybe I have pictures of some future stars!

Apologies for not posting anything last week. Work has been crazy and continues to be so. I do my best

These girls clearly enjoy football

I like their technique for keeping their hands warm...

Pile on!!!! Coach Peet clearly loves her work.

For some years now I’ve worked on commissions for Community Care magazine, but this will be no more since the print magazine has been taken out the back and shot by its owners, Reed Business Information.

This is a real shame because Community Care was a magazine which although aimed at a fairly un-glamorous niche (social care and social work issues), it was a well-considered publication, and one of the seemingly few non-glossy mags that used photography in a sensitive, appreciative, engaging way.

I enjoyed working with carers and their clients. Maybe that can continue with the online editions.

However, RBI have taken the decision to close the print title in favour of its online offering, which isn’t half as rich with engaging images. This may of course change, and it may be that they decide to spend something on original photography for the e-version.

As things stand now, the web edition images are often rather clunky stock images or low-quality snaps used very small. There seems to be a view that if an image is used at all, it should be a very distant second cousin to the text, but it’s no secret that a good image used properly will draw more eyes to an article, and isn’t that what publishers want? It all adds to the hit stats and that seems to interest publishers, even though the Community Care site appears to carry no advertising other than for industry jobs and their own conferences and events.

I’m not a publishing expert or industry analyst, but it would seem that by ditching the print version, RBI are happy to ditch all advertising revenues bar the jobs ads, unless they plan to introduce wider advertising to the website. Or put content up behind a paywall, which presumably care agencies would pay for based on the amount of access required. With some 3,000 online jobs ads per week, maybe this won’t be necessary, but leaves the publication vulnerable to one revenue stream.

Perhaps advertisers were simply becoming uneconomical to service in a printed version, but I wonder how many of the page hits on the website were generated by the print edition reminding people that the site is there? Perhaps it’s only a fraction, but it’s one thing to read articles because a magazine drops onto your desk, quite another to stay loyal when you’re fed a magazine edition via weblink. A printed magazine is a welcome distraction for many care professionals whose working lives I suspect are increasingly dominated by time at a computer monitor.

Of course I would like to hope that Community Care will still commission original imagery on occasion, but even so I have lost some great colleagues who I now know have been given redundancy notices. I won’t name them here, but they know who they are. They stayed loyal to me over the years and were always ready to show appreciation for my work. I wish them all the best for the future.

Community Care may be a small-circulation magazine, but it was a good magazine with a very valuable function. I’m not sure the website will replace the role the print edition had. We’ll just have to wait and see.

The final edition of Community Care magazine will be published on 24 November 2011.

What camera do you use?

I have a Nikon D40X with kit wide angle lens.

What kind of pictures do you like to take?

Landscapes and buildings are my favourite. They tend not to move about too much!

What was your most recent picture?

This one, a 14th century square in Barcelona – sitting with a friend, after a hot day, drinking beer, laughing and looking up at the beautiful architecture.  It reminds me of that night.

Sarah's Barcelona photo holds special memories.

What picture are you most proud of taking?

This one taken on a boat of the edge of the running rail and the sea. We were exercising the engines on a 50ft super-yacht in the Solent for a client.  It was a bitterly cold winter’s day – we were all wrapped up in layers and oilskins.  The sea was calm and I lent over the running rail, enjoying the wind and the salt when I saw the reflection of the sun on the water and just wanted to capture it.

Life on the Solent can make for beautiful pictures.

If you could improve one area of your photography, what would it be?

I’d like to learn to take better photos of people and capture that moment of happiness, sadness, joy etc just through one shot. Pictures of people being themselves is what I’d like to learn how to take – just smiles and frowns and expressions without the people posing.

Would you like to become a pro one day, or is this always going to be a hobby?

Always a hobby!

If you could have taken one great photo, what would it be?

I would love to have taken the planting of the Red Standard on Hitler’s headquarters – the Reichstag in Berlin – which marked the end of Nazi Germany. The man who snapped the historic shot was Soviet photographer Yevgeny Khaldei, someone who I admire greatly particularly as he was part of the propaganda machine.  However, as a Jew, his career was cut short by the wave of anti-semitism in the Soviet Union and he was sacked in 1949.

What drives your interest in photography?

Sarah Wolf has a passion for books on historical Russian photography.

One of the reasons that I adore photography is my love of war photos – particularly those taken in the Soviet Union.  As a Russian student, I spent many years studying the impact of Russia, and then the Soviet Union, on the course of history.  I bought many books of photography from the last 100 years and love the gritty realism of the photos of peasants working in the fields juxtaposed with the glossy photos of well-fed Party members.  You can understand a country through its photography – the photos that are published and those that aren’t (but have subsequently come to light).  Even though I no longer need to study Russian history, I will still spend many a happy hour looking through the photography books.

A sadness of the digital age, and no longer shooting on film, is that so many photos are deleted and never see the light of day.  I’m obsessive about cataloguing my life, and my family’s, through photography and have annotated photo albums going back to when I had my first camera aged eight.  Now that I shoot digitally, I print less photos and those that aren’t quite perfect are deleted so quickly, whereas in the past, there was the thrill of having your films processed and seeing your shots for the first time.  I even kept those photos that weren’t quite perfect which now provide an alternative picture of family holidays and events – you look in the background and see things that were accidently picked up and it gives a wider picture from that time than the story in the best shot that made it into the final album.

Thank you for your time Sarah.

If you would like to be featured as a Pixelhead, just drop me a line to tim@timgander.co.uk You will need to live in or near Bath, be an amateur photographer and willing to have your photo taken for the article